August 23, 2009

The Prologue


I’m not sure of the exact date, but it started at the end of last year. With all the attention of going green, of recycling, I felt forced to do my part. Actually I was being forced into a different reality, a different fate. So I like to call it my personal paradigm shift to security.

Mind you, I’m not one that conforms to much of anything and certainly I’m far from being conventional. But there are times that I do conform out of necessity for reasons of security.

Conforming like most all American families, I have a mailbox out on the curb in front of our American Dream. Each day, apart from Sunday and federal holidays, the mailbox is filled with junk mail and mostly bills to pay.

I’m the bill payer in my family. So I’m the one that moans and groans for every bill that arrives.

That was until that fateful day.

I began to look really deep into the envelopes. An obsession began. I know only some will truly appreciate my obsession for the weird, and the obscure. But an inexplicable obsession with envelopes, specifically “Security Envelopes” began.

Every day I’d open the bill, throw the bill into a stack and the return security envelope into a stack. Eventually, I’d pay the bill on the Internet then chunk the bill into the recycle can. The stack of bills would go down while the stack of return security envelopes got bigger. Then I began to notice differences in security envelopes.

They were printed in all graphical shapes and colors. The graphics varied. There were circles, crosshatches, checkerboard, squiggly lines, and straight lines. Some were black and white, some were blue and white, and the real gems that made me do a dancey dance were green.

I thought I was going crazy, I was amassing a pile of security. So finally one day I did it, while on my 15 minute lunch break at my job with the Social Security Administration. I googled the words security envelopes and I found some interesting people, who just like me hoarded with love these envelopes.

Some people used the envelopes to make real stuff like art or fun stuff like crafts, and the more studious types were just documenting the different patterns from around the world on a flickr page.

Then it hit me like a mail cart full of security envelopes.

I was not alone.
I was not “The Crazy Potter of Biloxi“ but I could be.

I had stopped to smell the envelope, if you will.
I was someone who took the time to look deep inside. And what I found was serenity, serendipity, and yes even security.


Tomorrow:
Security and the Blanket

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